Category Archives: Politics
Smart Money on Cantor
Eric Canter’s role as House Majority Leader is dead and buried. The smart money assumed Cantor was a sure thing. But he lost his seat in a primary challenge by David Brat, a college economics professor.
As Majority Leader Cantor couldn’t avoid the insider ways of Washington. That didn’t sit well with voters in his Richmond, Va district. He also moved toward comprehensive immigration reform which Ann Coulter insists only sits well with Washington Insiders.
Smart Money
Speaking of smart money, Brat only spent $122,793 on his campaign. Cantor spent that much on steak houses!
In the general election the conservative economics prof will face a sociology prof, Jack Trammell… from the same faculty lounge at Randolph-Macon college.
Carbon Cuts
President Obama made another end run around Congress in order to end the basis of all life on earth.
A 30% cut in carbon emissions from 2005 levels and must be achieved by 2030, or else.
Not a big deal says Robert Samuelson. Carbon emissions are already declining without EPA orders.
By 2012, CO2 emissions had already dropped to 2,023 million metric tons, a decline of 379 million metric tons. That’s 53 percent of the 2030 target. All of this has occurred without federal regulation of greenhouse gases.
The proposal’s real significance is that, if blessed by the courts, it would create a complex and costly regulatory apparatus that, in the future, might govern much of the U.S. economy.
China and India will more than make up for any U.S. cuts. But if you’re going to do it, Samuelson thinks the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to tax them.
If you want less of something, tax it… But there’s little public taste for this. Indeed, support for any anti-global warming legislation is weak. In 2009, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate, they could not pass a bill.
So Obama resorted to regulatory fiat: The EPA sets emission limits under the Clean Air Act. The proposal is hugely complex. Each state receives a target that can be met in many ways, subject to agency approval. This will be challenged in court and, if upheld, will strain the EPA’s administrative capacity. Winners and losers would be determined as much by political pressures as by market forces. It would be a bonanza for lawyers, lobbyists, economic consultants and public relations advisers. Whether it would affect the world’s climate is more questionable.
Krauthammer says the whole thing shows Obama is operating under his own constitution.
The Obama Workout Video
President Obama has released a new workout video. Actually, it’s an unauthorized cheap cell phone recording of the POTUS pumping iron. He was caught in a Warsaw hotel gym prepping for his Euro D-day tour.
Workout
At a D-day event luncheon Obama had a chance encounter with Russian President Putin. The two chatted for about 15 minutes. I recorded the conversation.
Jimmy Kimmel must have liked the cartoon!
Saving Private Ryan
Mad Magazine did a great satire on the Saving Private Ryan movie poster. It was titled Trading Private Bergdahl “they got five taliban leaders, we got one deserting weasel”.
In the actual movie, a Lincoln channeling General George Marshall gives orders to find Private Ryan. The hapless job falls to platoon leader Captain Miller.
During the search, Miller has to decide whether to keep a German prisoner or press on to find Ryan. He releases the Jihadi, er German, only to have come back later in the flick and kill one of his men.
When they finally find Ryan, Miller tells him all his brothers have been killed in battle and he has orders to bring him home. Ryan refuses saying the men he is with are his brothers now and he won’t leave them behind. Not exactly a Private Bergdahl moment, but hey, it’s a movie.
Even though they’re way outnumbered by the Germans, Captain Miller and his men stay, and they all get killed. Not really, but Captain Miller does. Miller’s dying words to Private Ryan are, “earn this”.
Saving Private Ryan
To further prove life is unfair, Private Ryan lost out to Shakespeare in Love for Best Picture in 1998.
Anyway, I thought this might be a good way to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day.
Coal Industry
Candidate Obama said he would bankrupt the coal industry in 2008. In 2014 President Obama said he has a pen and a phone and when Congress won’t act he will. Well, Congress wouldn’t act on carbon cap and trade so Obama’s EPA just did.
